Conspiracy

He snorted. ‘I might have given him some credit if he’d had the courage to address me directly. But they’re cowards, these Guise lickspittles. Let’s get out of this rain.’

One of the guards picked up the torch from the wall bracket and they followed us in to the staircase at a respectful distance. Our shadows flickered like giant carnival grotesques over the clammy walls as we spiralled down.

‘He was killed outside Saint-Victor, so I was told,’ Henri said, as we reached the first landing, taking out a key to unlock a small door set into the wall. A secret way back to his chambers, no doubt – this old part of the Louvre was full of hidden passages, as if it had been built expressly for spying and adultery. ‘I’d start there if I were you. I think we can safely say I don’t have many supporters among the religious orders. Those friars are all in Guise’s pocket.’

I nodded, and made a non-committal noise. I still had no idea whether the King was lying to me; I hoped he did not intend to direct my steps throughout. I had accepted a poisoned chalice, however I chose to look at it, and my motives for doing so were precisely the two things that had undone me before – a book and a woman. That woman. I should have been wiser.

Henri held out his hand so that I could bow and kiss his signet ring, a gentle reminder of his power to command. ‘One last thing,’ he said, pausing in the doorway. ‘My mother’s putting on one of her grand entertainments next Friday. Improve morale. If our popularity’s flagging, put on a show – you know what she’s like. Remind people of the old days. You must come.’

‘I thought I couldn’t be seen at court?’

‘Ah, but that’s the beauty of it – you won’t be. It’s a masked ball. Everyone will be in costume, faces hidden, no one will have the faintest idea who you are. Say you’ll come. Her women will perform too, if you need more persuading. I’d wager you don’t see anything like that at Elizabeth’s court.’ He poked the tip of his tongue between his teeth and wiggled it, an impish glitter in his eyes.

I could think of few places I would feel more exposed than the Tuileries palace during a masked ball, but the door had closed behind him and the key turned before I could protest. His departure seemed to suck all the force from the air; I felt my body sag with the weight of my tiredness. If the guards had allowed me, I would have curled up in a corner of the stone staircase and slept right there.

The ghost of Henri’s perfume followed me down the stairs. I left feeling deeply uneasy on several counts, hoping that I had not just made a pact to disguise a murder for my own advantage.

FOUR (#ua64309e4-61c3-5734-9347-6c90532311a5)

I woke late the next morning, opening my eyes to a dusty grey light with a lingering sense of dread. Easing myself on to my elbows, I registered the bruises along my shoulder and hip from my plunge the day before, but it took a moment longer for my mind to struggle through the fog of sleep until I could be sure that I had not dreamed my nocturnal audience with the King and its unwelcome conclusion.

So she had fled to Paris, as I had suspected. Sophia Underhill, the woman I had known in Oxford and Canterbury. The King was right; she had bested me, and the memory of it still burned. Like a fool, I had thought myself proof against the wiles of women; the self-discipline I had learned in thirteen years as a Dominican served me well enough to withstand the cynical and obvious seductresses of the French court, but nothing had prepared me for a woman like Sophia. Educated, spirited, hungry for life, knowledge, independence, she had found herself ceaselessly frustrated by the constraints placed on her by her sex. Life had not been kind to her, and those scars had lent her a lean and wary look, and an edge of ruthlessness in her determination not to be duped. She made it a matter of principle to strike first, before you could touch her; she trusted no one. That was a bitter lesson, and one I had learned too late. I had done my best to excise her from my heart and my memory, but the agitation I now felt at the possibility that she might still be in Paris suggested I had not succeeded. I tore a comb through my hair and examined my face in the glass to judge how much I had aged since she last saw me, all the while cursing her under my breath. Now I would walk every street searching the crowds for her face, despite myself.

Outside, the rain had relented but a thick mist lay over the streets, rising in curlicues from the river; it would not burn off now, with the air so cold and dank. Resting one hand on my dagger beneath my cloak and darting frequent glances over my shoulder, I followed the rue Saint-Jacques north towards the river, picking my way through hoof-churned mud and waterlogged wheel-ruts as the damp seeped through the soles of my boots. A bell tolled sullenly nearby; students hurried between the faculties of the Sorbonne, urgent voices carrying out of the mist before they emerged like rooks, robes snapping around dirt-spattered ankles, deep in earnest debate. I kept my head down, but my senses alert. No one appeared to pay me any attention, for which I was grateful.

The church of Saint-Séverin squatted on the corner of Saint-Jacques and rue des Prêtres, one street away from the river, a sprawling mongrel of styles and stones jumbled together over four centuries. Gargoyles leered down from its buttresses. I was surprised to find a crowd of at least a hundred gathered in the churchyard, clustered around a tombstone on which a man with grey stubble and fiery eyes stood shouting with his legs planted wide and a fist raised. I wondered first if he was mad, but as I drew closer I could hear his voice ringing out clear and purposeful, as if he were accustomed to oratory; some among his audience were clutching sticks and pokers and bellowing their agreement. The mood felt as edgy and dangerous as it had the previous Sunday, after Paul’s sermon.

‘The House of Valois believe they can defy all the laws of God and man without consequence,’ he cried, to an appreciative roar. ‘For years they have been stained with incest and murder, sorcery and heresy.’ (More roaring.) ‘Now our king allows heretics to flourish in France and we all know what is coming, don’t we, my brothers and sisters?’ (A frantic chorus of agreement.) ‘When the Huguenot Navarre is king, the Protestants will take their revenge for Saint Bartholomew’s night. They will rise up and cut us down in our homes. The streets of Paris will run red with Catholic blood, yours and mine, brothers and sisters!’ (A scream of ‘God have mercy’ from a woman in the throng.) ‘God has turned his face from France. Our harvests have failed, our armies are defeated, children and widows starve in the gutters. And what right have we to expect otherwise, when we allow ourselves to be governed by a king who is a blasphemer, a sodomite and a murderer, and his witch mother?’

The crowd almost lost control, roaring and brandishing their weapons; I stepped back in alarm as a man near me swiped a butcher’s cleaver through the air. I began to wish I had stayed away; there would be blood spilled before this was over.

‘Our dear curé, Père Lefèvre, has been murdered in cold blood for daring to speak out against the decay and corruption of the royal line. Thus the Valois show their contempt for the Church, for the laws of God and for human life. There will be no justice for him unless we the people demand it. We must march on the Louvre! Justice for Père Lefèvre!’

The crowd erupted in a cacophony of righteous fury; ‘Death to the King!’ and ‘Justice for Père Lefèvre!’ rang in the damp air. I took the opportunity to scurry away to the church. The main door was locked, but I followed a path around the back and found a side door that had been forgotten. It was a relief to step into the cool gloom of the empty nave. Despite the mist outside, a pearly light filtered through the high windows, painting faint jewel colours over the delicate arches of the vaults and the worn faces carved on the capitals. Here the air was cold and clear; the mineral smell of old stone cut through lingering traces of beeswax and stale incense. It seemed a lifetime ago that I had listened to the echo of my footsteps on these same stones on my way to corner Paul in his confessional. The dust swirling in ribs of light might have hung in the air for centuries. I stood before the altar, casting around as if I had lost something, until I attracted the attention of a young curate crossing one of the side aisles, a red-haired man in his mid-twenties with a preoccupied air and a tic in his left eye that gave the impression he was frantically winking at me.

‘The church is closed, monsieur. How did you get in?’ He sounded frightened.

‘I’m not one of them,’ I said, jerking my thumb towards the door. ‘I was a friend of Père Lefèvre.’

‘May God have mercy on his soul,’ he muttered, crossing himself. ‘A very sad business. But I can’t help you. The doors are supposed to be barred until they disperse.’ He chewed his lip and pulled at a thread on the cuff of his cassock.

‘I only wondered if anyone knew what had happened. I heard him preach on Sunday. It’s been a terrible shock.’

The young curate bit his thumbnail. ‘I understand there was an accident.’ His gaze flicked past me to the pillars of the ambulatory and the recesses behind. ‘He was attacked outside the city walls, they said.’

‘That doesn’t sound like an accident.’

Another sideways glance. ‘I don’t know any more than that.’

‘He seemed anxious recently. Something was troubling him.’ I left this hanging, neither quite a question nor a statement. This young man, for all his twitching, appeared shrewd; if he worked with Paul every day, he would surely have noticed any unusual behaviour.

Recognition sparked in his eyes for a moment, before it was replaced by the shadow of suspicion.

‘Who did you say you were?’

I searched his eyes again. A man in a priest’s robes, the laundress had said. Not this one; the voice was wrong. But there would be other curates here, potentially his friends or confederates.

‘I’ve known Paul – Père Lefèvre – for a long time. Before he was ordained. We were at the Sorbonne together.’

‘Before he joined the League, then.’ His tone gave nothing away. I had the sense that he was testing me. I decided to take a further risk.

‘Yes. Back when he was still human.’

The young curate’s face visibly relaxed. ‘I did not have that pleasure. I have only been here six months.’ He fixed me with a look that seemed intended to convey what he felt he could not voice. ‘I don’t think I have seen you here before?’

‘I did not attend often. I found Paul’s sermons increasingly hard to swallow.’

‘You were not alone there.’

Little by little, I thought, I could coax some truth out of him. ‘He was a difficult man to get along with,’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘He was sincere in his beliefs, at least.’

‘Not in itself a virtue. The Pharisees were sincere. Luther and Calvin were nothing if not sincere.’

‘True.’ He liked this; a faint smile chased across his lips. He glanced past me again, down the aisle towards the door, and dropped his voice another notch. ‘I say nothing against the League, you understand. They may be right on some points. Many points, even. But I believe a priest’s role is to preach the word of God, and to bring harmony where there is discord, not to fuel more discord. Our duty is the cure of souls, and there is a high price to pay for disregarding that.’

‘And you think Paul paid that price?’ I said.

The twitch in his eye intensified and his face closed up. ‘You have heard the crowd out there. They have already delivered their verdict. I’m afraid I must ask you to leave now, monsieur, so that I can lock the doors.’ He paused as another animal roar rose up from the churchyard. ‘When they are inflamed, they tend to break things.’

He turned and began to walk away through the ambulatory. I hurried after him as he slipped between the rows of carved columns, and caught at his sleeve.

‘But you had noticed that he seemed troubled lately, Father?’

He walked on a few more paces then stopped and turned to face me, anxiety knotting his features. ‘I don’t know who you are, but for the sake of Saint-Séverin, leave this alone. Let us mourn him quietly. His death is tragedy enough without it becoming more ammunition for one side or the other.’

‘It is already too late to escape that, I fear.’ I gestured in the direction of the noise outside. ‘Please – if you know anything about his death, it may help to prevent more violence.’

He regarded me a moment longer, then drew me by the elbow into an unlit side chapel, out of sight.

‘You are right that he was not himself lately,’ he said, in a voice that barely reached a whisper. ‘It began no more than a month ago. He seemed all of a sudden – uncertain.’

‘About what?’

‘Everything.’ He circled a hand to encompass the chapel, the altar, the crucifix above it. ‘He grew more and more withdrawn – I might almost say fearful. He was often absent – he turned up to celebrate Mass, but between times none of us knew where he was. Once he stopped me and demanded out of nowhere to know why I had desired to be ordained, and if I still felt the same.’ He shook his head. ‘I had witnessed something similar with a fellow ordinand when I was in the seminary. If it had been anyone else, I would have said …’ He let the sentence tail off.

‘That he was losing his faith,’ I offered. I had seen it too, when I was taking holy orders; no one who has entered the religious life could fail to recognise a crisis of belief in a brother. ‘But it did not show in his sermons.’